Eric Laffoon

[Antonio Larrosa]

Hi Andras,

I'm very sad to read that. I didn't talk much with Eric over the years
apart from at Akademys but I always thought he was a nice person and it's
sad to know that news. He'll be remembered at least by some of us old
contributors who were lucky enough to meet him.

I've searched in my photo collection and found a few pictures of him. Let
me share at least a couple of them where he's actually with you, just in
case you don't have them.
>From Akademy 2004 in Ludwigsburg:


And from Akademy 2005, in Málaga:






In any case, thanks for letting us know of this sad news.

Greetings,

-- 
Antonio Larrosa

El vie, 22 may 2026, 19:05, Andras Mantia <andras at mykolab.com> escribió:

> Dear fellow members,
>
>  I hope it will not bother you to write a few words about a person, who
> passed
> away a few days ago. I only found out today, but as he was someone close
> to me
> at one point and also very much involved in the KDE project, I felt I need
> to
> write a few words about him.
>   25 years ago I was still trying to find my way in the world and while I
> was
> learning Qt and discovered KDE, I was contacted by someone from the USA
> who
> reported bugs and asked for new features for a small  KDE application I
> wrote
> at that time.
>  And that's how it started. He dragged me into another project that he
> used,
> but lacked developers due to disagreement with the original authors.
>  Eric was very passionate about cats, programming, open source and
> although
> not really a coder, he was a supporter of the open source idea and
> especially
> of KDE, not only in words, but by putting his hard earned money in it.
>  For years he supported the development of the Quanta Plus application,
> came
> with ideas for it, participated in the community discussions, was present
> at
> several aKademy meetings, also as a speaker. At that point he was a well
> known
> person in the community.  As life takes you on unknown paths, our
> collaboration ended around 2009. I don't contribute much, if at all
> nowadays
> to the project. He also had big changes in his life over the years and
> left
> the KDE community too. We only occasionally exchanged mails in the past
> years,
> I didn't really follow what is going on with him, and I was stunned to
> hear
> about him passing away.
>  Eric, without you I would not be here and I would not be the person who I
> am
> now. You gave me the opportunity to be a full time open source developer
> for
> years, this gave me the opportunity to meet an extraordinary community
> with
> very skilled and nice developers, many of them still being my friend and
> my
> workmates here at KDAB. Without your support I probably wouldn't work
> there, I
> wouldn't and couldn't live my life as I do now. You were a supporter, a
> mentor, a friend even if we had disagreements. I will never forget you.
>
>  Wherever you are I hope you will find some cats and have fun with them!
>
> May you rest in peace,
>
> András
>
> PS: I attach some pictures with him from different KDE gatherings and some
> links...
>
> https://dot.kde.org/2003/04/22/people-behind-quanta-plus/
> https://dot.kde.org/authors/elaffoon/
> https://www.golem.de/0408/33049.html
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/284483488422443/permalink/2987121768158588/
>
>
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